Magellan's Log: Iris Murdoch: Bonding

Though one often wonders just how comfortable Murdoch was with her gender and her body, mostly one suspects when she was writing it just didn’t matter. Drawn to centers of conflict, the mare’s nests of emotional blockage that evoke and then destroy love, more often than not through the books she writes of male-male and male-female relationships. Finally in The Philosopher’s Pupil she casts her careful eye on two young females and gives us girlhood at surely its best. Hattie, the philosopher’s daughter, and Pearl, her companion, are not merely drawn, they are painted with a depth and love which Murdoch bestowed on few other characters.